Lee Ranaldo "feeling optimistic about the future," though it might not involve Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo recently gave an interview to Rolling Stone to ostensibly discuss his forthcoming solo record, Between The Times And The Tides, which comes out March 20 via Matador Records. But the conversation naturally drifted toward the current state of Sonic Youth, which appears to be very uncertain in light of the marital separation of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. Sonic Youth recently played its final (to date) scheduled concert, and aside from "a little bit of tiptoeing around and some different situations with the traveling," the tour apparently went well. But when he was asked if he was optimistic about the future of the band, Ranaldo's non-answer was telling:

I'm feeling optimistic about the future no matter what happens at this point. I mean, every band runs its course. We've been together way longer than any of us ever imagined would happen and it's been for the most part an incredibly pleasurable ride. There's still a lot of stuff we're going to continue to do. There's tons and tons of archival projects and things like that that are still going on, so there are so many ways in which we are tied to each other for the future both musically and in other ways. I'm just happy right now to let the future take its course and I guess I'm kind of thankful that I've got this other project that kind of came about on its own. It wasn't kind of like, well, "Oh the band is ending for a while and I've got to figure out what to do." It kind of naturally happened in the course of things so that was a nice way for that to come about.

So, Ranaldo doesn't say Sonic Youth is finished, but he's glad he has a solo record coming out in the near future. Hm ... [via Rolling Stone]